Humanitarian intervention Lomborg style
It's impossible both to support the Iraq war primarily on humanitarian grounds and also accept Bjorn Lomborg's criticism of the Kyoto Treaty*.To remind you of the latter it is basically that for the cost, which he estimates at some $150bn to $200bn a year, it does not provide enough benefits. He suggests Kyoto would only delay the impact of global warming by six years, and the number of lives saved would be minimal. However you could spend that money on ensuring all the world has access to clean drinking water, which would save 'several million' lives a year (other estimates say 5 million) and 500 million people from getting ill per year.
You can see where this is going. The Iraq fiasco has cost the US around $150bn to $300bn. The number of lives saved has been estimated at around 2,000 a year (this assumes that things get better -- at present it has probably increased the number of deaths per year). For the same money the US could have provided clean drinking water to everyone in the world which would have saved 5 million lives a year.
* I reject both arguments, but many don't.
posted by Matthew @ 9/22/2004 01:05:00 PM
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